Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 6, June, 1953

“Force of habit,” Johnny said. Slipping off the harness, he hung it from the back of his chair.

“I never saw a gun grip like that before,” Cynthia said. “Is that a picture on it?”

Instead of answering, Johnny glanced questioningly at his boss.

“She’s a big girl,” Harry said. “Show it to her.”

Slipping the automatic from its holster, Johnny removed the clip and ejected the shell in the chamber. He offered it to Cynthia, butt first.

“It’s a war souvenir,” he said. “The Kraut it come from must of cut the side grips out of plexiglass from the cowling of a crashed plane, and put those pictures under the plexiglass. Maybe she was the Kraut’s girl.”

The pictures under the transparent side grips were of a plump, full-bosomed blonde, the one under the right grip a front view and the one on the left a rear view. Both were full-length photographs and in both the girl was stark naked. Cynthia handed the gun back without comment.

“I got it off my captain at Cassino,” Johnny said. “Best officer we ever had, Captain Grace. I’d of followed that guy straight into hell.”

“I thought you said it came from a German,” Cynthia said.

“Yeah, the captain found it on a dead Kraut, and when the captain died, I got it off him. Funny thing, the way it happened.”

The bodyguard stared down at the gun in his hand, and when neither Cynthia nor Harry commented, he said, “We was on a patrol and the old man got out ahead of us. We saw him get hit, but just then a couple of Kraut machine guns started sweeping the area between us and Captain Grace. The sergeant was all for getting the hell out of there, but I could see the captain leaning back against a pile of rocks, and he didn’t look dead to me. So I went after him. Still don’t know how I made it there and back. It was three hundred yards through machine-gun fire with hardly any cover.”

Cynthia, who had been listening intently, stared at him with dawning understanding of her husband's regard for the lean gunman. Her normal sense of guilty uneasiness in his presence was replaced by a feeling of astonished respect.

“That must have taken remarkable courage,” she said.

Johnny considered this with evident surprise, as though it had never previously occurred to him. Finally he said in a tone which indicated he thought the explanation should have been obvious, “He was my captain.”

After a moment he added, “Never forget what he said when I showed up. He kind of smiled and said, ‘I might have known you’d be along, Johnny. But it’s no use. I’ll be dead in ten minutes.’ He wasn’t lying. He was totally paralyzed from a hole square in his center, and the minute I saw his wound, I knew it would kill him to move him a foot.”

Again he gazed down at the gun he was holding. In a reflective voice he said, “Funny part about it, two minutes later he was cussing my brains out.”

Both members of his audience looked at him without understanding.

“Because I took the gun,” Johnny explained. “When he felt me pulling it out of his holster, he got it in his head that’s all I’d come after. Christ, as though I’d crawl three hundred yards through machine-gun fire after a lousy gun. I never even thought of it until I saw the captain was a goner. But when I crawled away he called me every kind of name he knew. He was still swearing when I got out of earshot.”

Cynthia said blankly, “But, Johnny, if it upset him that much, why didn’t you leave it?”

“What good was a gun to a dead man?” Johnny asked with genuine astonishment. “I was just being practical. Christ, if I could of changed places with the captain, I’d of been glad to watch him crawl away, but there wasn’t anything I could do for him. I always liked this gun. Lot’s of times before the captain got killed I used to wish it was me who had found that dead Kraut instead of him.”

Harry said with a mixture of wonder and affection, “Johnny, you’ve got the damndest philosophy I ever heard of.”

The tale left Cynthia more confused about Johnny than ever, for it revealed a mixture of courage, loyalty and ruthlessness which hardly seemed compatible in the same person. Deliberately she wrenched her mind from him by leaving the table to examine the galvanized wash tub. Harry’s eyes followed her.

“Cynthia wants her bath,” he said to Johnny. “Come hell or high water, Cynthia wants her bath seven nights a week. As a student, they called her ‘Sanitary Cynthia’.”

“What’s wrong with liking to be clean?” Cynthia asked.

Without having to be requested, Johnny did the preliminary work necessary to taking a bath under primitive conditions. Going outdoors with the galvanized tub and a snow shovel, he returned with the tub half full of snow, dragged it across the floor and heaved it up onto the stove.

It took nearly an hour for the snow to become hot water. When its temperature finally satisfied her, Johnny lifted the tub from the stove to the floor. Then he seated himself at the table with his back to the tub and began to lay out a deck of cards for solitaire.

Cynthia was acutely conscious of the size of the room as she began to undress, for the position of the table in the cabin’s center placed Johnny’s back not more than three feet from the tub. Nevertheless she had no intention of going bathless for six weeks, and decided she might as well steel herself to the unconventional circumstances from the beginning.

She did hurry, however, and she bathed as quietly as possible, hoping the absence of splashing would make Johnny less conscious of her nakedness immediately behind him. From his bunk Harry watched this struggle between modesty and hygiene with evident amusement.

It was not until she had stepped from the tub and was rubbing herself down with a towel that she remembered the window directly in front of Johnny. Against the blackness outside it acted as a dull mirror in which she could see her reflection clearly. As she looked, she met the reflection of Johnny’s eyes staring straight at her, and quickly covered herself with the towel.

Johnny’s eyes dropped to his cards and he did not look up again as she slipped into the thick flannel nightgown. She had picked it out when they stopped to buy sufficient clothing to last their stay at the cabin. Barefooted she ran to her bunk and slipped beneath the covers.

Silently Johnny rose, dragged the washtub to the front door and emptied it into the night.

That night it stormed. The earlier snowfall had been windless, the flakes settling straight down like an endlessly unrolling curtain. But during the night wind began to whisper about the eaves and steadily increased its force until it screamed and howled like a million caged animals.

When Cynthia awoke at seven in the morning, Harry was still asleep and breathing heavily, but Johnny was gone from the cabin. He had rebuilt the fire, for the room was pleasantly warm. She took advantage of his absence to dress quickly in woolen slacks and ski boots she had bought for the winter siege, and pulled over her head a tight-fitting turtle-necked sweater with long sleeves.

She washed briefly in cold water from a bucket next to the sink, brushed her teeth and had just finished brushing her hair in the small shaving mirror over the sink when Johnny came in the back door. He was dressed in hunting pants and leather knee boots, a Mackinaw coat and a woolen cap with ear mulls, and he carried the snow shovel.

Stomping snow from his boots, he said, “I cleared a path to the outhouse and lighted the kerosene stove. It’s stopped snowing finally.”

As she made her way to the outhouse Cynthia discovered the snow either side of the path Johnny had shoveled reached clear to her shoulders at one spot, but at another place faded in depth to below her knees. Glancing at the surrounding country, she realized the night wind had piled snow in the drifts which might vary from a matter of inches to spots where it would be over her head. It was cold, still hovering around zero, but the sky was clear with the promise of sunshine and the air was entirely still.